Magic Weekend offers Joel Monaghan chance to put dark days behind him

• Shamed Australian makes Warrington debut
• Seven games over two days will start season

Wigan won the 2010 Grand Final, thanks partly to this try by Martin Gleeson, and are favourites to retain their title. Their first game is against St Helens as part of the Millennium Magic weekend in Cardiff. Photograph: Alex Livesey/Getty Images

Brett Hodgson and Joel Monaghan arrived at Warrington this winter in very different circumstances, and with wildly contrasting reputations. But it is the addition of the widely admired 2009 Man of Steel from Huddersfield, and the globally mocked Monaghan – the former Canberra and Australia three-quarter who was driven to England to escape his internet-video-related notoriety – that makes the Wolves the most likely challengers to the Super League champions, Wigan, in the 16th "summer" season.

They will make their debuts in primrose and blue when Warrington play Huddersfield in the first game of the seven-match marathon weekend at the Millennium Stadium with which the season will begin on Saturday. In any other circumstances, Hodgson would be the centre of attention on his 33rd birthday, as the wiry and wily full-back faces the club to whom he gave such outstanding service for the past two seasons. But the barking that promises to be audible from the sparsely populated stands beneath the closed stadium roof will not be directed at him.

It is Monaghan whose signing has captured the imagination of supporters well beyond Warrington, and has offended the odd long-standing Wire so much that they have declared themselves neutral for the season. The reason was Monaghan's very Mad Monday last September, when he simulated a sex act with a team-mate's dog after Canberra's end-of-season celebrations. For anyone fortunate enough to have missed the details, the contents of a plastic bag with which he was presented by a Leigh fan before his first appearance for Warrington in a pre-season friendly provided a clue. "Dog biscuits," explained Tony Smith, Warrington's former Great Britain and England coach. "To be honest, I feared a lot worse."

Yet Smith is delighted to have Monaghan on one end of a formidable three-quarter line that has another Australian giant, Matt King, on the other wing, with the England centres Ryan Atkins and Chris Bridge inside them. "Joel is a fine young man who did something very stupid, and a very good rugby league player," said Smith.

"Every single one of the 14 Super League clubs would love to have Joel Monaghan in their team," added Brian Noble, Smith's predecessor as Great Britain coach, summing up the general consensus that Warrington have been gifted a gem. "He's played State of Origin for New South Wales, and Test match rugby for Australia, and you have to be a fair player to do that."

The 28-year-old is joint second favourite to be the leading try-scorer in his first Super League season, and in the top 20 to be named Man of Steel – just behind Hodgson and his elder brother, Michael, a tough and creative hooker who will be starting his fourth season with the Wolves.

At 6ft 2in, the younger Monaghan is especially dangerous from the accurate high kicks in which most successful teams now specialise, and he has already identified Lee Briers as a potentially productive source.

But he has been more enthused by the expansive approach encouraged by Smith last season, which took the Wolves to a second consecutive Challenge Cup win at Wembley in August – but malfunctioned in wet weather in the Super League play-offs the following month. "The style we play here, for a back it's awesome," he added. "We have a crack from anywhere. Briersy, Richie Myler – they'll zing it."

Rain will not be a factor beneath the Millennium Stadium roof, but Huddersfield, who dumped Warrington out of the play-offs last autumn and are also strengthened by their Australian signing Luke O'Donnell, will be tough opening opponents for the Wolves – as the Monaghans know only too well. In his first season with Canberra, in 2003, Michael had his jaw broken in two places, and his lower teeth pushed into his palate, following an incident for which O'Donnell received an 11-match suspension – at the time the second longest in the history of the National Rugby League.

There was some debate over whether O'Donnell had actually caused all the damage, but it was not an isolated incident, as the second-row, now 30, joined Huddersfield from the North Queensland Cowboys having been suspended more often than any other NRL player – even Adrian Morley, the former Sydney Roosters firebrand who is now Warrington's captain. "He's a very tough player, one of those forwards who absolutely loves the physical side of the game," Morley said this week, clearly relishing the challenge awaiting in Cardiff. "When you add him to what was already quite an intimidating Huddersfield pack, it could definitely be lively."

It is just a shame that the Warrington-Huddersfield game will not have an intense atmosphere to match, as the teams have been condemned to play a high-calibre curtain-raiser six hours before Wigan face St Helens in the repeat of last season's Grand Final that has been promoted as the highlight of the opening day. That is the problem with the concept of the Magic Weekend, as even in the unlikely event of the aggregate attendance reaching 60,000, there will rarely, if ever, be half that many in the stadium as spectators inevitably drift in and out of the matches.

Still, there will be more than enough rugby – probably too much – to satisfy the committed and the curious. The younger Monaghan brother fits into both those categories, and it will not take much for him to eclipse even Mickey Rourke and his muse Gareth Thomas as the story of a potentially surreal weekend.